Brian Stokes Mitchell

Brian Stokes Mitchell, born October 31, 1957, in Seattle, Washington, is an American actor and singer whose baritone voice has made him one of the prominent leading men of Broadway since the 1990s. The youngest of four children, he was born to George Mitchell, an electronics engineer and former Tuskegee Airman who later worked as a civilian engineer for the U.S. Navy, and Lillian Mitchell (née Stokes), a school administrator who became the first African-American policewoman in Seattle and later earned a master's degree in social work. Mitchell is of mixed racial heritage, including African American, German, Scots, and Native American descent. Because his father's work took the family to various U.S. military bases overseas, Mitchell grew up in multiple locations before the family settled in San Diego, California, where he began acting in junior high school musicals. He started performing professionally while still a student at Patrick Henry High School, studying acting and voice privately during his teen years. He did not attend college, though he has said he studied film scoring, orchestration, and conducting through UCLA.

Mitchell's screen career began before his Broadway debut. He played John Dolan in Roots: The Next Generations in 1979 and spent seven years, from 1979 to 1986, portraying Dr. Justin "Jackpot" Jackson in the CBS medical drama Trapper John, M.D. During the 1980s he also appeared as a celebrity panelist on episodes of $25,000 Pyramid and $100,000 Pyramid, helping a contestant win the $100,000 grand prize in February 1986, and participated in four weeks of episodes of the short-lived NBC game show The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour, which ran from 1983 to 1984.

Mitchell made his Broadway debut in 1988 in the musical Mail, with music by Michael Rupert and lyrics by Jerry Cocker, earning a Theatre World Award for that performance. His early Broadway work continued with an all-Black revival of George and Ira Gershwin's Oh, Kay! in 1990, followed by Jelly's Last Jam in 1992, based on the works of jazz artist Jelly Roll Morton, and Kander and Ebb's Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1993. Prior to his breakthrough in Ragtime, he performed professionally under the name Brian Mitchell.

Mitchell originated the role of Coalhouse Walker Jr. in Ragtime, which opened on Broadway in January 1998, earning him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical. The following year he appeared in the revival of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate as Fred Graham/Petruchio, a performance that won him the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical in 2000, along with a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical that same year. He received two additional Tony nominations in subsequent years, for King Hedley II in 2001 and Man of La Mancha in 2003. In 2001 he also received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word Album for The Complete Shakespeare Sonnets.

His Broadway credits extend across several decades and genres. He starred opposite Patti LuPone in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, based on the Pedro Almodóvar film, which opened at the Belasco Theatre in November 2010. In 2016 he appeared in Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed, playing F.E. Miller alongside Audra McDonald, Billy Porter, Joshua Henry, and Brandon Victor Dixon, with the production opening officially on April 21 at the Music Box Theatre. His Broadway work also includes productions listed in verified records such as Chance & Chemistry, A Wonderful Life, and Love Life. In 2016 Mitchell received the Isabelle Stevenson Award.

Beyond Broadway, Mitchell supplied the singing voice of Jethro in the animated feature The Prince of Egypt in 1998 and played the recurring role of Trevor Newsworthy/Collins, Hilary Banks' news anchor fiancé, on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. He appeared in a concert version of South Pacific at Carnegie Hall on June 9, 2005, starring as Emile alongside Reba McEntire as Nellie Forbush and Alec Baldwin as Luther Billis; the production was taped and broadcast by PBS in 2006. He has also appeared in New York City Center Encores! staged concert productions, including Do Re Mi in 1999, Carnival! in 2002, Kismet in 2006, and The Band Wagon in 2014. In 2002 he played the title role in a Kennedy Center production of Sweeney Todd as part of a Stephen Sondheim celebration.

Mitchell's television work includes a recurring role as Cam Winston, Dr. Frasier Crane's upstairs neighbor and nemesis, on Frasier beginning in 2002, appearances on Glee in 2012 as LeRoy, one of Rachel's fathers, a recurring role as Scott Knowles, CTO of E Corp, on the USA Network series Mr. Robot from 2015 to 2019, and the role of Walt in the CBS sitcom Fam in 2019. He has also appeared on The Path, Billions, and The Good Fight. His voice work spans an extensive list of animated series and films, including Batman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, and the Flintstones animated films Hollyrock-a-Bye Baby and I Yabba-Dabba Do!, among many others. He plays Nicholas Prophet in Wolverine: The Long Night, a scripted podcast serial.

Mitchell released his debut solo CD, Brian Stokes Mitchell, on June 6, 2006, through Playbill Records, followed by a second solo album, Simply Broadway, released on October 30, 2012. He also recorded a Christmas concert with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, released as both a CD and DVD under the title Ring Christmas Bells. He has been married to actress Allyson Tucker since 1994, and the couple has a son named Ellington.